Robberies Hit New Yearly & Quarterly Lows
C-Stores Top Retail Sector - Chicago Top City - Monday Top Day

Yearly Comparison - 2016-2021
Down 9.5% From 2020 - Lowest Year On Record

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Is Tech the Answer to Surging ORC?
Retailers Turn to Technology to Combat Organized Retail Crime
So, what can be done? How can retailers fight this disease when there's no cure? How can they stop its spread when it has already migrated to an online space?

The answer is in technology — not in traditional closed-circuit television (CCTV) or acousto-magnetic tags, but in new cutting-edge systems that simply weren’t possible before now. While none of these are a complete cure, technology can help stop thieves without endangering employees or customers, track patterns and collect data, and deter criminals without restricting customers.

Stop Thieves Without Endangering Others

ORC gangs target large amounts of merchandise, so they typically aren’t shoving product in their pockets and walking out. Instead, they commit pushout theft by filling a cart and walking out the front door. Self-locking shopping carts, like those produced by Gatekeeper Systems, help prevent pushout theft by keeping the merchandise in-store. If thieves attempt to walk out of the store without going through checkout, the cart locks in place, and most thieves run for it or take only what they can carry.

Track Patterns and Data

An important part to creating a case is collecting evidence, tracking patterns, and compiling data. Artificial intelligence can help track patterns, identify strategies, and more when thieves strike so retailers can take steps to prevent them in the future. Solutions like Everseen help retailers see what's going on at the register by flagging thieves who try to sneak products through self-checkout aisles. The data collected at the register helps retailers build a case against the thieves on camera.

Deter Criminals

One solution is mobile surveillance units stationed in the parking lot. These typically have cameras, lights and even speakers to make them easily noticeable. Criminals tend to go to easier targets while customers welcome the increase in safety. Our customers at LVT (LiveView Technologies) have seen up to a 70 percent reduction in parking lot incidents as well as a 66 percent reduction of shoplifting events after deploying their mobile surveillance units. An increased presence in the parking lot helps deter criminals before they ever enter the store. mytotalretail.com

Calling on Congress to Enact INFORM Consumers Act
Op-Ed: Congress must address rampant retail crime

Nearly 70% of businesses have reported an increase in retail crime

As this country suffocates under a 9.1% inflation rate, American small businesses are feeling the pinch acutely. According to a recent Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Voices survey, 91% said these broader economic trends are having a negative impact on their business. Whether they are reducing their inventory, letting go of valuable employees or tightening profit margins, times are tough for independent business owners.

While these broader economic trends are challenging enough, many small businesses are simultaneously having to endure a wave of retail theft, further eroding their bottom line.

These crimes are also having an alarming impact on the front-line retail workers and police forces. Over 86% of asset protection managers said that thieves have verbally threatened an associate with bodily harm, and 76% have claimed to have been physically assaulted. The threat of violence is even driving some businesses to shutter their doors. Just look at Starbucks, who recently decided to close 16 stores due to “safety issues.” The increased wave of organized retail crime is stretching the local police forces tasked with responding thin, but, with Democrats heightening their cries to defund the police, there’s no telling if they will receive the adequate resources needed to keep up with the volume of attacks.

That’s why, as Congress reconvenes in September, it’s time they prioritize H.R. 5502, the Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers (INFORM Consumers) Act. If passed, H.R. 5502 would create an even more transparent marketplace by requiring online marketplaces to verify and disclose the contact information of certain high-volume, third-party sellers. This effectively discourages criminals by removing the layer of anonymity criminals online find so appealing and ultimately renders their preferred platform to peddle stolen goods unviable.

This bill has broad bipartisan support, as well as the backing of retail, tech and law enforcement groups alike. The INFORM Consumers Act is a must-pass, commonsense piece of legislation that could finally deliver some relief amid the current onslaught of economic turmoil and safety threats. It provides a unique opportunity to prevent crime while standing up for small businesses and consumers alike. Conservatives in Congress may not be able to immediately solve inflation brought on by current administration and congressional Democrat policies. But helping end costly organized retail crime that is crushing small retailers is within reach. Congress should not miss the opportunity to push this bill across the finish line this fall. washingtontimes.com

NYC Store Security Guards Under Siege
Security guards feel helpless as brazen thieves loot high-end NYC stores
Security guards at several high-end stores in the West Village and Soho say they feel like sitting ducks as thieves loot their stores in broad daylight with no consequences.

The two NYC nabes — and their high-end shops — have become a target for enterprising robbers, like the group of seven men and women who sauntered into the Lululemon store on 14th Street and 9th Avenue around noon on Aug. 16 and made off with close to $30,000 in stolen goods.

A number of security guards and managers at ritzy stores in the area told The Post this week that it’s almost impossible to stop thieves like the Lululemon gang.

Kirstin Aureden, a manager at Marni at 159-161 Mercer St., said she and her sales team don’t detain people who sneak out with clothes or shoes or even challenge them. “We don’t confront. We don’t follow. We just let it go.”

A security guard at the Dior store at 105 Greene St., like many who spoke to The Post, sounded defeated.  "There’s no sense in stopping people,” he said. “You don’t know what they’re going to do. Not only that, everything is insured.”

The NYPD’s 6th Precinct, which covers both the West Village and Greenwich Village, has seen crime spike 80% — fueled by a 103% increase in grand larceny and shoplifting, new NYPD data shows. The area has seen the biggest crime increase of any area in the city so far this year.

The area covering the 6th Precinct has seen 1,380 major crimes through the middle of August in 2022, compared to 766 in the same period in 2021, statistics show. Most of that crime wave stems from a huge number of grand larcenies, which include shoplifting. So far there have been 802 this year, compared to the 394 recorded over the same period last year — a 103% rise, according to the figures.

Some say the alarming rise in thefts and general crime is due to New York’s controversial bail reform laws. Under those rules, virtually all larceny suspects get released without having to post bail or bond.  nypost.com

CFO Says Increasing ORC Decreased Q2 Gross Margin - Co. Supports Buy Safe America Coalition
Higher Shrink Will Continue Impacting Margins

Ulta Beauty (ULTA) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Settersten -- Chief Financial Officer

For the quarter, gross margin decreased 20 basis points to 40.4% of sales, compared to 40.6% last year. Although we had less total promotional activity during the quarter, overall merchandise margin was lower than last year,

Gross margin was also negatively impacted by higher inventory shrink, primarily due to increased theft across the retail landscape, theft and organized retail crime are increasing, and we are seeing similar trends in our business. We are working diligently to keep our associates and guests safe and to reduce the risk of impact through investment in new fixtures, additional associate training, innovative technology solutions and increased staffing levels.

We are also working with and supporting retail industry organizations and the Buy Safe America Coalition to address opportunities at the legislative level.

We expect gross margin expansion for the year with leverage of fixed costs and growth in other revenue, partially offset by lower merchandise margin, higher shrink and higher supply chain costs. fool.com

Uptown Areas Across The Country Struggling With Public Safety
Retailers Still Closing in Uptown Minneapolis Due to Public Safety Two Years After the Riots
Fast-fashion chain H&M has closed its Uptown Minneapolis location, an expected change for the Seven Points shopping center being redeveloped at Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street.

Meanwhile, a mile away, the Patina gift and specialty store on Franklin Avenue is closing after a 25-year run at two locations in the neighborhood. Owner Christine Ward cited a variety of reasons, including public safety.

"Uptown has its challenges. I think it might return, but I'm not sure how long it will take," Ward said. "We would consider coming back if it met the requirements for our staff and customers."

Once a regional destination, Uptown struggled with a broader shift in retail before the pandemic and lost several national retail chains. Then came the shutdowns, damage in the riots after George Floyd's murder by police and the police shooting of Winston Smith in an Uptown parking garage. startribune.com
 
Mass shooting insurance coverage becomes reality for more businesses

Violent crime plan discussed in Baltimore at same time as mass shooting miles away

US: 95.8M Cases - 1M Dead - 91.2M Recovered
Worldwide: 604.4M Cases - 6.4M Dead - 579.3M Recovered

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 362  
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 794
*Red indicates change in total deaths

COVID's Long-Term Impact on the Workforce
Up to 4M people may be out of work due to long Covid, new research suggests
Up to 4 million people may be out of work because of long Covid in the U.S, according to a report published this week by the Brookings Institution. In lost wages, that could add up to at least $170 billion per year, the report suggests.

The research looked at people who worked full time, or the equivalent of full-time hours, before they got long Covid: an estimated 12 million people in the U.S., according to federal data.

From there, it estimated how many people were out of work or working reduced hours because of persistent health issues following a Covid infection. Based on those findings, the Brookings report determined that 2 million to 4 million people in the U.S. are working less or not at all because of their illness.

Several surveys have attempted to quantify the impact of long Covid on employment. A working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis estimated last month that 26% of people with long Covid were out of work or had reduced their working hours as of mid-2021. nbcnews.com

The "COVID Hangover" in Downtown America
Can North America's downtowns reverse their downturns?

Downtowns across the US and Canada were badly hit by the pandemic, and many are still struggling.

Remote and hybrid working means that far fewer people are having to go into city centres to work, or are choosing to live there. At the same time, tourist numbers remain below 2019 levels.

With tourism just starting to come back the hospitality and restaurant industries are "operating at two-thirds capacity." "Not because of a lack of customers, but a lack of staff. If you look at workforce shortages, we call it the 'Covid hangover'."

Regarding office and retail workers in New Orleans, Mr Hecht adds that "a lot of people decided that they would rather work for Uber and have control over their lives... they are never going back to a retail or office job".

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, Mayor John Tory told the BBC that the challenge for his administration is "to get people back downtown". bbc.com

CDC Releases – 2022 – 2023 Influenza Flu Season Recommendations
Prevention and Control of Seasonal Influenza with Vaccines: Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — United States, 2022-2023 Influenza Season has been published. CDC recommends everyone 6 months and older in the United States get a flu vaccine, ideally by the end of October.  cdc.gov

Moderna Sues Pfizer and BioNTech Over Covid Vaccine

CDC director discusses efforts to reform the agency amid COVID, monkeypox criticisms

Not Even Elon Musk And Jamie Dimon Can Stop Remote Work

FRT Algorithms Improving Recognition Rates With Masks
Biometrics work too well with face masks for criminals to hide; or for anonymity
Since the beginning of the pandemic, an increasing number of face biometrics developers have stepped up their efforts to improve the recognition rates of individuals wearing masks.

It was a necessity to keep people safe from COVID-19 while also securing areas from unwanted visitors, and so the technology soon spread from everyday scenarios to more specific ones, such as industrial, academic, and many others.

Face masks, however, have historically not only been worn only by individuals trying to limit the spread of diseases but also by those aiming to conceal their identity for nefarious purposes.

Despite the worst of the pandemic being (hopefully) behind us, many biometrics companies have continued to improve mask recognition algorithms, while others have deployed the technology for surveillance-related goals. biometricupdate.com

Deep Learning-Based Face Recognition Technology with an Accuracy of 99.95% for Facial Recognition Even for a Person Wearing a Niqab
The limits of facial recognition software when a person’s face is partially hidden, as can happen when wearing a veil or protective face mask, are the subject of research published in the International Journal of Biometrics.

Full-face biometric identification has been the subject of a substantial amount of research. However, employing faces that are only partially visible, like veiled people, is difficult. In this study, the deep convolutional neural network (CNN) is used to extract characteristics from photographs of veiled people’s faces.

The researchers claim that their deep-learning technique for facial recognition is 99.95% correct, even when a person is wearing a niqab, which mostly hides the face except for the eyes. Age estimation and gender recognition by the algorithms are both 99.9% correct. Examining the eyes can identify a veiled person or wearing a COVID mask as happy or frowning with an accuracy of 80.9%.

As algorithms and software have advanced, it is no longer necessary to have a clear face-on image to confirm a person’s identification as it was in the early days of traditional facial recognition systems. Therefore, it is conceivable that DeepVeil will experience the same thing with the proper strategy and continued development. marketpost.com

Porch piracy enters Capitol Hill’s crosshairs
In mid-May, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., introduced legislation to punish the theft of packages delivered by private-sector companies in the same way a thief would be hit for stealing parcels delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. The legislation would give prosecutors broad jurisdiction to determine the types of incidents that warrant felony charges.

The Porch Piracy Act, which as of early August had 70 legislative co-sponsors, is designed to bring uniformity to the punishment meted out to so-called porch pirates. Under federal law, stealing a package delivered by the Postal Service is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

States getting tougher

Eight states have passed laws in the past three years elevating all porch theft from a misdemeanor to a felony Five more, including California and New York, have introduced similar legislation, according to the data.

A law in New Jersey signed earlier this year allows prosecutors to seek fines against porch pirates of up to $15,000 or three to five years in prison. In Kentucky, a bill signed into law in June makes porch piracy a class D felony punishable by one to five years in prison. freightwaves.com

Dallas-Fort Worth flood caused as much as $6 billion in damages
Gov. Greg Abbott to sign a disaster declaration for 23 counties, including Dallas and Tarrant.

The estimated damages would make the flood one of the costliest storms in Texas in the past four decades. 3,500 property claims, 1,300 auto claims and less than 20 flood claims had been filed through National Flood Insurance Program.

Restaurants and bars in Deep Ellum, downtown and East Dallas were some of the areas hit hardest. dallasnews.com

What First Responders Use Retailers Will End Up Benefiting From & Using
DHS: Urban OpEx—New York City Is a Testbed for First Responder Tech
For the Science and Technology Directorate’s (S&T) National Urban Security Technology Laboratory (NUSTL), working in Manhattan is business as usual. As the official Department of Homeland Security lab for testing and evaluating current and emerging first responder technologies.

Over the course of a week in late July, staff from NUSTL and across S&T collaborated with several federal, state and local agencies for the 2022 Urban Operational Experimentation (OpEx), which also brought together technology developers and first responders to take part in demonstrations and evaluations.

Urban OpEx put seven new and emerging technologies into the hands of 150+ first responders from all over the country so they could explore each one’s features, functions, and capabilities, then give end-user feedback to the developers behind these tools.

The lineup of technologies for the week featured unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), deployable robotics, handheld sensors, AI-enabled gun detection, incident management and situational awareness platforms, and deployable communications. The OpEx planning team selected participating technologies by validating them against specific criteria including that each fell into a least one priority area identified for S&T by first responders themselves. Info & Feedback to be published on S&T website. dhs.gov

270+ Delivery Drivers Sickened & Hospitalized
UPS Drivers Say ‘Brutal’ Heat Is Endangering Their Lives
As blistering heat waves swept across the United States this summer, breaking temperature records and placing millions under heat advisories and warnings, workers like Mr. Gubell have continued to deliver America’s packages for a variety of carriers, often in trucks that have no cooling mechanisms for drivers. Some UPS workers have shared photographs that show thermometer readings of up to 150 degrees in the backs of their trucks.

Now, a string of heat-related illnesses among the drivers has renewed calls to improve their working conditions.

“They’re vomiting, their bodies are shutting down,” said Dave Reeves, the president of Local 767, a Texas local of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 350,000 UPS workers across the country. He added, “It’s awful.”

Government records show that the problem is not isolated: Since 2015, at least 270 UPS and United States Postal Service drivers have been sickened and in many cases hospitalized from heat exposure. Dozens of workers for other delivery companies, including FedEx, have also suffered from heat exhaustion, according to the records, and a handful of drivers have also died in the past few years. According to the Teamsters, heat-related injuries, illnesses and deaths among drivers are severely underreported. nytimes.com

Talk About Forcing a CEO to Apologize
Starbucks illegally withheld raises from union workers, labor board says

The coffee chain has been trying to tamp down a national organizing campaign

Starbucks illegally withheld wages and benefits from thousands of unionized baristas, the National Labor Relations Board alleged in a complaint Wednesday.

More than 230 locations have joined the Starbucks Workers United union since late 2021, driving a surge in unionization nationwide.

The NLRB seeks back payments and benefits for unionized workers since May and to require Schultz to read a statement to workers about their union rights. The board said Starbucks’s denial of benefits and raises to union workers was intended to discourage union organizing.

The labor board is also requesting that Starbucks provide a copy of all payroll records, time cards and personnel reports so that it can analyze the amount of back pay owed to workers. The remedy outlined by the complaint would require that the company send apology letters to all affected baristas and conduct a training for managers and supervisors on workers’ rights and labor law. washingtonpost.com

The Case Against 'Just Walk Out'
Cost of Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology “far too great”
The cost of Amazon’s Just Walk Out (JWO) technology is “far too great” for the concept to work properly, according to LS Retail director of business development Sigurður Ari Sigurjónsson.

Sigurjónsson criticized the model on his LinkedIn, saying: “One of the reasons (it won’t work) is that the cost of technology in the beginning is far too great for this concept to work.”

“Putting in all this investment upfront in AI, security equipment and all the other hardware means that you need to either have a lot of foot traffic through your store or high enough margins. In this case the technology is just a burden on Amazon’s operations!” chargedretail.co.uk

Dillard's Is Closing Stores, Starting Aug. 27

REI employees vote to unionize at Berkeley store

Bloomingdale’s opening second store under 'Bloomie’s' banner


Quarterly Results

Correction: Ulta Beauty Q2 comp's up 14.4%, net sales up 16.8%

Movado Q2 U.S. net sales down 5.4%, Intern. sales up 15.3%, net sales up 5.1%

Hibbett Q2 cop's down 9.2%, net sales down 6.3%

Gap Q2 comp's down 10%, online sales down 6%, store sales down 10%, net sales down 8%
   Old Navy comp's down 7%, net sales down 10%
   Gap comp's down 7%
   Banana Republic comp's up 8%, net sales up 9%
   Athleta comp's down 8%, net sales up 1%

Shoe Carnival Q2 comp's down 13.8%, net sales down 6%
 

Senior LP & AP Jobs Market

Cool Job:
Dir. Global Security Operations Center job posted for NFL in Mount Laurel, NJ
The NFL’s Global Security Operations Center (GSOC) helps leadership understand internal and external events that impact the key metrics of its businesses. The objective is to respond more rapidly and effectively to information, whether it involves terrorism, criminal matters, brand sentiment, employee issues, or exigent circumstances. hdmm.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com